Certain governments are suggesting that bloggers and tweeters aren't 'real' writers and, so, don't merit protection. A writer is anyone from a Nobel laureate to a debut blogger. They all get PEN's attention.
John Ralston SaulRead
Languages and cultures are disappearing at an enormously fast rate, and many of them are in Canada. These are extreme examples of removal of freedom of expression - to actually lose a language and the ability to express that culture.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the rapid loss of languages and cultures, emphasizing the impact on freedom of expression.
John Ralston Saul reflects on the alarming rate at which languages and cultures are vanishing, particularly in Canada. This loss is not merely a cultural tragedy; it represents a severe limitation on freedom of expression, as language is the primary means through which culture is communicated and understood. The statement serves as a call to recognize and value the diversity of languages and cultures, reminding us of their fundamental role in preserving identity and enabling genuine expression.
Themes
LanguageCultureFreedomExpressionIdentityDiversity
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about cultural preservation, this quote can emphasize the importance of language.
More from John Ralston Saul
All quotes →Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire.
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Our civilization is locked in the grip of an ideology - corporatism. An ideology that denies and undermines the legitimacy of individuals as the citizen in a democracy. The particular imbalance of this ideology leads to a worship of self-interest and a denial of the public good. The practical effects on the individual are passivity and conformism in the areas that matter, and non-conformism in the areas that don't
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The best defence [for a democracy, for the public good] is aggressiveness, the aggressiveness of the involved citizen. We need to reassert that slow, time-consuming, inefficient, boring process that requires our involvement; it is called 'being a citizen.' The public good is not something that you can see. It is not static. It is a process. It is the process by which democratic civilizations build themselves.
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One of the things non-aboriginal Canadians learned from aboriginal people over the last 400 years is you don't have to be one thing. That's a European idea. There's multiple personalities, multiple loyalties. You can be a Winnipegger, a Manitoban, a Westerner.
John Ralston SaulRead
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